Using the Programme Guide of the World
Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki Finland in August 2017 (to which I will
be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on,
rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf
copy of the Programme Guide. The link is provided below…Image
Aesthetics of the
SF Covers – The panelists discuss the evolution and aesthetics of science
fiction book covers around the world. Can any local or time-related trends be
discovered?
Elin Fägerlind: 32 year old undergraduate of engineering
mathematics and dynamical systems…studied French, Arabic and Russian.
Nicolas Krizan: Swedish graphic designer, illustrator and
comic artist, fan since the late seventies, worked professionally since the
early eighties.
The undergrad has
a link: http://sfcovers.blogspot.com/
that’s really quite good, and I can only imagine that the covers he displays
not only reflect the history of the aesthetic of paperback SF covers, but also
ones he might actually LIKE.
His site is full
of paperback covers, which is fun to drift through. It’s a good thing for me
that there’s no commentary, because it would most likely be in Swedish…
So, if he can do
it, I can, though for me I’ll be sharing the most memorable covers – magazine
and paperbacks – in my history of reading SF.
I love these
covers because they inspire me. I love them because they do something to my
mind. I’m currently reading Lisa Cron’s WIRED FOR STORY. If you haven’t yet,
run out right now and get it. Make sure you don’t check it out form the library
like I did. I’m using post-it notes until I can buy my own copy.
But these covers
are exactly what she’s writing about when she says, “Evolution dictates that
the first job of any good story is to completely anesthetize the part of our
brain that questions how it is creating such a compelling illusion of reality…Simply
put, we are looking for a reason to care. So for a story to grab us, not only
must something be happening, but also there must be a consequence we can
anticipate. As neuroscience reveals, what draws us into a story and keeps us
there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing
information is on its way. This means that whether it’s an actual event
unfolding or we meet the protagonist in the midst of an internal quandary or
there’s merely a hint that something’s slightly “off” on the first page, there
has to be a ball already in play. Not the preamble to the ball. Not all the
stuff you have to know to really understand the ball. The ball itself.” (Wired
for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the
Very First Sentence)
These covers do
that for me. They signal me that there’s something GOOD coming, but that the
good will not arrive without self-sacrifice. Sacrifice is a very naughty word
in this second decade of the 21st Century; I think the concept is
what Humans are fleeing from when they say that religion is dead, or God is
dead, or gods were never alive, or it’s not relevant to today. I think it’s the
core of the Human penchant for mass slaughter which also might be called
OTHER-sacrifice – be it through a governmental regime or individual pique over
imagined slight.
My daughter is an
artist (you can check out her site here: http://www.dreamingincolor.blog/),
so I know that art tells story as words do only in more compact form. I suppose
I would say that where poetry tells story more precisely than prose does, the
best art tells story more precisely than poetry does. (The image above is
I’m not an artist,
so I need to use words to paint a picture. Cron’s book, based as it is solidly
in neuroscience, is revealing the brain science of story.
I look forward to
learning enough to become a better writer.
Image: http://www.dreamingincolor.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/warmguilt-654x1024.jpg,
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